Greetings, assembled goyim!
2019-Apr-21, Sunday 09:57![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
That's how I started my Seder on Friday, as I was the only Jew in attendance.
Thanks to years of living in Japan, I conduct most of my life on the floor, so I didn't have people sit around a central Seder table. Instead we sat in a circle on the floor and the table was off to the side, within easy reach, so whenever we needed something I could reach over and grab it. I really liked the way it looked when it came together:
A few people arrived early and we watched Prince of Egypt, which I watch every year before Passover because it's the best telling of the Exodus that I've ever seen, and then a few more people arrived right when the movie ended, I lit the Shabbat candles, and we settled down on the floor to begin the Seder.
I was really satisfied with how it went! A couple people there had been to a Seder in the past, but the majority hadn't--when we went around the circle and I asked what people hoped to get out of the night, most people said that they hoped to learn more about Jewish Passover celebrations because it wasn't something they were familiar with at all, so I hope that I provided them with a fulfilling and illuminating experience. We also talked about modern plagues (indifference to refugees, apathy, bigotry, etc), and what aspects of ourselves we hoped to reawaken in the coming spring, because Passover is a spring festival, after all. My answer was that I hope to get back into translating Wild Man Blues, which I've let lie fallow for the last couple months.
No one else knew any Hebrew, so I did all the singing, though I did get everyone in on the chorus to "Dayenu," and we sang "Chad Gadya" after the meal. 🎶
It was a potluck Seder, and I provided the mains and much of the desserts. With more time to plan than last year, I decided to take a different tack than the Seders I had done withschoolpsychnerd (where she had planned and executed most of the cooking), and gave the meals a Japanese spin. I made soy-sauce-marinated miso brisket, miso matzah ball soup, matcha flourless choco cake, and in lieu of the gefilte fish that I had bought last year and which I was the only one who ate, I made homemade kamaboko from cod. I also made Sephardic charoset, though now that I think about it, I'm wondering how I could give that a Japanese spin too. I'm sure there's something I could do if I looked hard enough.
Credit where it's due--I got a lot of inspiration from Kristin Eriko Posner, a Japanese-American convert to Judaism who put a ton of effort into melding the two culinary cultures together.
We ate, chatted, sang, prayed, and celebrated the liberation of the Children of Israel, and I got several comments from people about how they had a great time. A lot of the attendees came in from the suburbs, too, so I'm really glad they were willing to stay until almost midnight--it was about three and a half hours from Seder start to when we ate--and that everyone participated in the majority of the discussion prompts I threw out, and indeed, in the Seder itself.
I was worried about this year's Seder for a few reasons. The first is that originally I had 17 people attending and 8 maybes, so I was trying to figure out how to fit 25 people in my apartment. Unfortunately there were some last-minute cancellations due to sickness and sudden scheduling conflicts, but that also meant it was much easier for the attendees to fit comfortably in a circle. The second is that, like I mentioned during the Seder, it always used to be something I did withschoolpsychnerd, but now I'm making it my own. This is the first year I changed all the food and I wasn't sure how it would come out, but people had nothing but good things to say about it to me.
I went to![[twitter.com profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
gothiklezmer's Seder last night and she had made up her own Haggadah with a website that stitched together various portions into a single Haggadah, and while I really like the one I use, maybe I can customize some sections and create the perfect Seder for me. Next year (in Jerusalem)! 
If you want to read the Haggadah I used for my Seder this year, it's available online here (PDF warning).
Thanks to years of living in Japan, I conduct most of my life on the floor, so I didn't have people sit around a central Seder table. Instead we sat in a circle on the floor and the table was off to the side, within easy reach, so whenever we needed something I could reach over and grab it. I really liked the way it looked when it came together:
A few people arrived early and we watched Prince of Egypt, which I watch every year before Passover because it's the best telling of the Exodus that I've ever seen, and then a few more people arrived right when the movie ended, I lit the Shabbat candles, and we settled down on the floor to begin the Seder.
I was really satisfied with how it went! A couple people there had been to a Seder in the past, but the majority hadn't--when we went around the circle and I asked what people hoped to get out of the night, most people said that they hoped to learn more about Jewish Passover celebrations because it wasn't something they were familiar with at all, so I hope that I provided them with a fulfilling and illuminating experience. We also talked about modern plagues (indifference to refugees, apathy, bigotry, etc), and what aspects of ourselves we hoped to reawaken in the coming spring, because Passover is a spring festival, after all. My answer was that I hope to get back into translating Wild Man Blues, which I've let lie fallow for the last couple months.
No one else knew any Hebrew, so I did all the singing, though I did get everyone in on the chorus to "Dayenu," and we sang "Chad Gadya" after the meal. 🎶
It was a potluck Seder, and I provided the mains and much of the desserts. With more time to plan than last year, I decided to take a different tack than the Seders I had done with
schoolpsychnerd (where she had planned and executed most of the cooking), and gave the meals a Japanese spin. I made soy-sauce-marinated miso brisket, miso matzah ball soup, matcha flourless choco cake, and in lieu of the gefilte fish that I had bought last year and which I was the only one who ate, I made homemade kamaboko from cod. I also made Sephardic charoset, though now that I think about it, I'm wondering how I could give that a Japanese spin too. I'm sure there's something I could do if I looked hard enough.Credit where it's due--I got a lot of inspiration from Kristin Eriko Posner, a Japanese-American convert to Judaism who put a ton of effort into melding the two culinary cultures together.
We ate, chatted, sang, prayed, and celebrated the liberation of the Children of Israel, and I got several comments from people about how they had a great time. A lot of the attendees came in from the suburbs, too, so I'm really glad they were willing to stay until almost midnight--it was about three and a half hours from Seder start to when we ate--and that everyone participated in the majority of the discussion prompts I threw out, and indeed, in the Seder itself.
I was worried about this year's Seder for a few reasons. The first is that originally I had 17 people attending and 8 maybes, so I was trying to figure out how to fit 25 people in my apartment. Unfortunately there were some last-minute cancellations due to sickness and sudden scheduling conflicts, but that also meant it was much easier for the attendees to fit comfortably in a circle. The second is that, like I mentioned during the Seder, it always used to be something I did with
schoolpsychnerd, but now I'm making it my own. This is the first year I changed all the food and I wasn't sure how it would come out, but people had nothing but good things to say about it to me. I went to
If you want to read the Haggadah I used for my Seder this year, it's available online here (PDF warning).
no subject
Date: 2019-Apr-22, Monday 05:52 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-Apr-22, Monday 14:21 (UTC)It was probably for the best.